Those parenting activities are wonderful, and I com- mend you if you do them. They are part of a successful parent-child relationship. But while spending time with kids is important, time alone will never result in a true connection between parent and child because true connection requires something more than just time.
To understand that missing piece, let’s use your workplace as an analogy. Imagine if you just showed up at work and spent the whole day doing…well, nothing. Just drinking coffee, watching videos, eating lunch, maybe going out for a drive. You’d have spent a whole day “with” your work, but accomplished almost nothing. You’d have put in the time, but it was empty time—time without intention or focus.
We have expressions for this in the professional world—we call it “face time” or “putting in time” or “logging hours.” They’re all ways of describing time with- out quality, and we all know the kind of results we get from simply putting in time.
Sadly, however, those phrases also describe how we often spend time in our personal lives. We’re logging hours and putting in time, but it isn’t the kind of time that connects us to our kids, creates intimacy, and forges strong bonds. It isn’t quality time.
Quality time is something different. It’s time with purpose. Time with focused attention. Time where we shift our focus away from ourselves and our worries and place it, with intention, on someone else.
Quality time is what’s missing in our family lives, and it’s what our kids need the most.